Trump obliterated his rivals in Iowa, but still faces a big hurdle

THE bitter cold in Iowa during the days before Monday's Republican caucuses meant the effective cancellation of the climax of the campaign.

- Michael Wolff

"Everything's frozen in place," one Trump senior staffer happily told me, just another indication that nothing whatsoever could change the outcome of the Republican presidential race.

That is, as metaphors go, a wholly apt one so far for the 2024 campaign: for nearly a year now Donald Trump has been the all-but-inevitable Republican nominee. Nothing has been able to disturb that march. Not Ron DeSantis, an opponent backed by the Republican party's big money, not a guilty verdict on sex abuse charges, nor two state criminal and two federal criminal indictments, nor efforts in multiple states to throw him off the ballot for the constitutional no-no of inciting insurrection. Not even for moderating his position on abortion to almost heretical levels in evangelical-ruled Iowa. And not the fact that his two main opponents, DeSantis and Nikki Haley, have largely lived in Iowa for the past six months, while Trump has hardly missed a golf game in Mar-a-Lago.

The only hope in the last cold days was that the unprecedented margin Donald Trump seemed headed for on Monday in the caucus meetings across the state might be somehow less than an unimaginably unprecedented margin a hope dashed by his grabbing more than 50 per cent off the vote, vastly beyond what any Republican has ever achieved in the state.

Practically speaking, his main challengers had given up months ago.

Neither was campaigning against him.

Their race was only against each other and for second place, in the hope that they might... well, it was impossible to guess what they thought they might gain, beyond good standing in an irrelevant parallel world.